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Seeking Solace (story)
A little girl, maybe 3 years old, walks with surprisingly steady steps up a mountain side. Her brown hair is almost blond at the top layer, bleached from many hours of playing games outdoors. She is wearing a nightdress with her favourite blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders to ward of a slight chill in the night air. Something very bad had happened, she had heard it through the door to the secret room. She didn’t know why it had happened though. Her big sister had already left for a sleepover with a friend, and Mum and Dad had been telling stories. Something had happened, and Dad had hid her in the secret room and told her to not cry, not make a sound and not come out until she was fetched. After he closed the door she had done exactly as told until her sister came back. It was tiresome to walk up the steep mountainside, even though there was a path to follow. It was something instinctive, a calling deep inside that what she needed most she could find up here. It was a good thing that their home was so close to this particular mountain. She knew the path fairly well, because Mum and Dad and Yolie had often brought her up here to see the view over the valley. Finally she reached a shallow cave, just after the night had shifted over to the washed out pre-dawn light that doesn’t yet qualify as morning. She knew this was where she wanted to be, because when she put her hand against one of the cliffs she could feel the humming in her hand, unlike the ground near her home where she had to put her ear to the ground and listen very carefully to hear the humming. Another clue was of course the red smoke-like light that moved in the back of the cave. In the middle of the smoke the light was vaguely shaped like a human woman. Who? The question formed itself with a female voice, though it sounded a bit distracted – as if it was only barely paying attention. “Sonja” she replied to the light. Parents? The question made her think of things she had put aside during her long walk. Last night, her parents had been sitting by the kitchen table and told her stories while they went over their equipment. Sonja had been half asleep in the fold-out kitchen bench. There had been a noise outside and she had been pulled up by Dad. Then what? The female shape in the red smoke came closer and touched Sonja’s cheek, somehow making Sonja’s hair move around her face as if she was under water. There was a room behind the wall in her parents’ bedroom. It was barely large enough to be called a closet and she could hear Mum shout. Dad had told her to not cry, not make a sound and not come out until she was fetched, and he had said that he and Mum loved her and Yolie so much. Yolie had opened the secret door long after everything had gone quiet in the house, and it felt like she had been sitting there waiting forever. Yolie had been crying and her voice was so cracked and muffled that Sonja almost couldn’t understand her. Then Yolie had rushed off and Sonja had been left with a group of neighbours and a lot of dead bodies. Most of the bodies were in the kitchen and the small room opposite the bedroom. While Sonja had been thinking of those events, the female shape had lifted her from the ground and held her firmly in a close embrace. Safe. Tired? Sleep. The little girl really did feel drained, both physically and emotionally. She curled up and fell asleep, floating in the middle of the humming red light. Many hours later she would wake up back among her neighbours and be scolded for scaring them and thank goodness it was a fragment of Mumbler she had walked up to and not the people who had attacked. Later she would find out that Yolie also had been running up the mountains, but by a different path, and nearly got herself killed in the venture. See also *Domdal (timeline) Category:All Pages Category:Needs a picture Category:Stories Category:World 20